Metronome
by Elsweyr
Summary: 2. How Telaendril joined the Brotherhood, and the start of Gogron's affections. -- Chs. 3 & 4 reposted later. --
1. Haskill

Some more oneshots that aren't good enough to be posted seperately. Oblivion-related this time.

This here's a short bit of artistic license involving everyone's favorite Princes… okay, maybe not everyone's.

I don't own anything. Really.

**Metronome - 1. Haskill. **

"He's becoming incredibly powerful."

Two Daedric Princes strode over the waters of Oblivion, their feet never touching down but they moved quickly nonetheless.

"Perhaps too powerful." Azura said with a hint of suggestion in her voice. Beside her, Molag Bal, never slowing, turned to look at her.

"More than Malacath? Boethia? Dagon?" he asked. When Azura nodded, Bal snorted. "Then remind me again why we're heading to his plane with all haste."

"To asses the situation. We may need to take some sort of action against him."

"Like killing him, you mean?"

Azura didn't reply -- that was a yes.

**ooo**

The two Princes ran across the waters as fast as their legs could take them, more often than not aided by magical means. When they'd reached Jyggalag's plane of Oblivion, his Knights of Order had been waiting. Even they were immensely powerful, and after only minutes both Azura and Bal had been driven from the plane. Azura leaned on Bal, who in turn was trying, unsuccessfully, to straighten his tail.

"That could've gone better." Bal said once they'd found a neutral plane. They sat on the warm ground, resting while their wounds healed. His tail still hadn't lost its little kink.

"I fully expected that to happen." Azura assured him. Bal didn't seem at all assured.

"Yet you took me along? Look at my tail!"

"Boethia offered to come, Bal." Azura reminded the flustered Prince. "However, you felt the need to accompany me instead."

Molag Bal said nothing, but his kinked tail flicked in agitation.

**ooo **

Azura looked at the little Breton that Bal held up, the collar of his shirt held between the Prince's thumb and forefinger. The Breton's arms were held straight out in front of him, his thumbs touching, and his legs kept curling up under him, bending at the knees. On his face was a look of total concentration.

"What's he doing?" Azura asked.

"I'm not sure." Bal admitted. "Watch." He set the Breton on the palm of his other hand, and the mortal began to run along the lines of his hand. "He does it every time I pick him up." Bal picked the Breton up again, and he went back to bending his knees. "What do we need him for?"

"What is the opposite of Order?"

"Chaos."

"Precisely. Your little mortal is insane -- that would be chaos of the mind, wouldn't you agree?"

"I guess so."

"It is." Azura asserted. She held her hand out, and Bal deposited the Breton into her hand. He took up running along the grooves of her palm. "What is his name?"

"Haskill."

**ooo**

The Knights of Order greeted Azura and Molag Bal in much the same way as they had during their previous visit, but they barely got within an arm's length before a strange change overcame them. Some grew thinner and taller, their limbs resizing and their skin gaining a golden hue. Some grew shorter and darker, their bodies thickening with muscle and their skin turning gray. They stopped their attack and stood around Azura's feet as she held up the crazy Breton.

In mere moments, Jyggalag appeared, his visage unchanged. Bal and Azura exchanged a glance -- the Knights had been changed by the presence of Haskill's insanity, but it would apparently take a bit more for the actual Prince.

"What is _that_?" the Prince of Order demanded, his voice thundering. Bal had an idea then -- he took Haskill from Azura and held the Breton up for Jyggalag to see.

"Another mortal for your realm." Bal told him. Jyggalag looked from the mortal to the Princes, disbelieving.

"An apology." Azura put in. "For coming uninvited into your realm." She touched the back of Haskill's head, extracting a small ball of writhing blackness. Haskill went limp, and Azura extended her hand to Jyggalag. "An apology." she repeated.

Jyggalag was too preoccupied with the suddenly demonic smile on Molag Bal's face to see the thing on Azura's hand, and that was exactly what she was planning on. Jyggalag grasped her hand. After a second he went rigid.

Then he screamed.

Bal backed out of the enraged, distressed Prince's way, and Azura put her hands over her ears. The scream woke Haskill, and he calmly covered his own ears. Jyggalag tried to swing his massive sword at them, but it had shrunk and narrowed, had turned in on itself until it resembled a stick of polished wood with a ball of silver where the sword's hilt had been. His armor fell off in chunks, and he began to grow rapidly smaller. By the time the echoes of his screams had died away, a mortal-looking man stood where Jyggalag once had.

Sheogorath blinked up at them and waved his cane merrily in greeting. "Hello, Bal, Azura! Stop by for a visit? Now's not a good time! Look at this!" He spread his arms wide to encompass his realm -- the tall, diamond-like towers, the perfectly sloped, emerald-green hills, and the clear, crystalline water. "Everything is in complete Order! This demands disarray!" As he spoke, the towers began to melt. They formed twisted, gnarled roots and tall, colorful trees. The waters grew mucky and monsters reared up from them. The land seemed to split itself right down the middle. "Much better! Oh, is that Haskill you've got there, Bal? Put him down here! I can't very well order him around if he's hanging around up there with you all day!" Bal set the Breton down. "Ain't that better, Haskill?

"Very much so, Sire." Haskill replied in a bland, sane voice. Sheogorath's ensuing laughter crackled with insanity.

**ooo**

"That was entirely too easy." Azura said as she and Bal made their way back across Oblivion's waters.

"It was." Bal agreed.

"It will probably come back to haunt us in an era or two."

"Or three."

"Yes, probably three."


	2. Telaendril

**2.** How Telaendril joined the Brotherhood, and the start of Gogron's affections.

I own nothing except Maerndril and Grimshod.  
Expect to see more of the latter in the future.

**ooo**

Maerndril clutched at his little Bosmeri heart, trying to calm himself and return it to its slower, steadier pace -- but his heart wouldn't have none of that and, judging by the miniscule smile/smirk on the lips of the hooden man who'd so suddenly and silently appeared in front of him, it was obvious Maerndril was terrified.

_But_, he told himself, breathing slowly in and out. _The Dark Brotherhood is not here for _me._ They are here for that... that horrible thing I've had the misfortune to call a daughter all these years._

The hooded man cocked his head to the side, crossed his arms and tapped the gloved fingers of his left hand against his right bicep."You prayed to the Night Mother, did you not?" he asked. His voice was so low that Maerndril had to strain his pointed ears to hear him. "'Night Mother,' you said, 'my daughter has disgraced me for the last time.' It was as if you were _demanding_ we do what you are too cowardly to." The man paused and seemed to collect himself, as if, by his own standards, he'd gone a little overboard. "That was you who prayed for the assassination of Telaendril?"

Maerndril's throat had gone dry -- he squeaked when he tried to form words, and nodded instead. The hooden man stared at him a moment longer, then turned and dissapeared through the dark doorway.

**ooo**

Telaendril's blood boiled as she hid in the doorway's shadows, listening to her father's one-sided conversation with the assassin. If he wanted her dead so badly, he could at least have the stones to plunge a dagger into her heart himself, instead of praying to some 'mother'.

Telaendril's internal ragings were cut short when the hooded man deigned the formalities done and turned to leave, no doubt on his way to slice Telaendril's throat with that wicked-looking dagger on his hip. She turned and fled, never making a sound as she reached her own room. She shut and locked the door behind her and set a tripwire on the one window. She dug through her desk and came out with a potion of drain health -- she dipped an arrow in it, nocked her bow, and pulled the string back. Then she crouched on her bed, her back against the headboard, and waited.

After ten minutes or so had passed, Telaendril began to think the assassin had been daunted by the door -- then there was a rattle on the doorknob, a small _click_ of the lock unlocking, and it swung open. But instead of the hooded man, there stood a little Bosmer, one of her father's help if she remembered right.

"Excuse me." he said nervously. "Your father requested I check on your... well-being before you retire."

"I am perfectly fine." Telaendril said, never lowering her bow. "Tell him that. Tell him it will take more than a single man to destroy me."

The little elf's eyes widened -- of course he'd known about Maerndril's plan -- and he bowed and backed out, shutting the door after him. Telaendril made sure the tripwire was still intact, and leaned against the headboard again.

"Such venom." purred the shimmering patch of air next to the window. Telaendril swung her bow around and fixed it on the shimmer that was so out of place it was absurd she hadn't seen it earlier -- but it _hadn't _been there earlier. Telaendril realized, now a little too late, that the Bosmer minutes ago hadn't been checking on her at all -- he'd probably had that deadly blade pricking his skin and forcing him to open the door.

"Sithis enjoys such... spirit." the assassin made a noise that might have been a laugh. "Your window trap was clever, but useless. I saw you in the shadows, little elf. I watched you run back here with a silence Vicente would envy -- but that means nothing to you, of course."

"Why haven;t you tried to kill me yet?" Telaendril asked, a small spark of hope igniting within her.

The man smothered that hope beneath his bootheel. "So eager to die? I could ask you the same. You have a bow trained on me, and I have nothing but --" He was cut off as Telaendril let the poisoned arrow fly, then turned and punched the assassin's summoned skeleton in its perpetual, idiotic grin -- the skeleton clattered and reared back. Telaendril spun around, fully expecting to be stabbed in the face, but the hooden man was having problems of his own -- while Telaendril's arrow had missed his arm, it had pinned the sleeve of his robe to the wall and he was having a hard time tearing free.

Telaendril took that has her cue to escape -- she swung her bow over her shoulder, used her would-be murderer as an imprompty stepping stool, and dived out of the window, squeezing through the top of the sill and the tripwire. She grabbed a branch to halt her rapid descent, clambered onto it, and escaped into the tree.

**ooo**

"She escaped, Lucien." Vicente Valtieri told his Brother matter-of-factly. "Sithis certainly won't be pleased. What do you expect from Grimshod?" The vampire paced around the living quarters, muttering to himself.

"Relax, Brother, before you wear a rut in the floor." Lucien bit into an apple. "_My_ life is in danger, not yours."

"Well, yes, but --"

The heavy doors creaked open before Vicente could finish. A High Elf stood there, his face hidden by the shadow of his black hood.

"Grimshod --"

"Quiet, Vicente; sit." Vicente did. "Lucien, I hear your contract ended in failure." Lucien nodded. "Under normal circumstances, I would deal with you myself, or leave you to the Wrath of Sithis. However," Grimshod waited as Lucien took a crunchy bite of his apple. "Our Dread Father only demands blood -- it does not matter whose. Since your contract was unfulfilled, you will not recieve your payment. But instead of punishing you as I should, you will be sent to recruit the very person you were under orders to kill. Tilindril, was that her name?" Grimshod's white teeth shown out from under his hood as he grinned. "It seems someone paid her father a visit after you left."

**ooo**

Telaendril set up her makeshift camp around the eleventh hour of night, pulling off her boots and laying down on the bedroll. She was still running on adrenaline, hours after she had put an arrow through her father's old heart -- the image of him clutching the feathered shaft as if it was an illusion, his face changing from serent to horror, was still etched into her mind. She could still see it, and feel his lifeblood pooling around her fingers as she'd wrenched her arrow out as painfully as she could. He had died horribly, she hoped.

Now Telaendril was coming down from the rush, albeit slowly. She closed her eyes and tucked her arm under her head as a makeshift pillow. A cold breeze blew over her and she shuddered -- then she was on her feet even before she'd opened her eyes.

"You sleep rather soundly for a murderer." The hooded man was smug.

"You've had your chance to kill me." Telaendril said. She was back on the rush. "It is pointless now --my father is dead."

"So I've heart. This time, however, I am not here to kill you." The assassin shook his head, then bent in a mock-bow. "I am Lucien Lachance, Executioner of the Dark Brotherhood. Normally our Speaker, Grimshod, would be the one to recruit you, but this is my... punishment. I believe he thinks it humiliating."

"Is it?"

"The Night Mother would never humiliate her beloved children." Lucien smiled, tight-lipped. "If you wish to have a family again -- one that would never dream of harming you -- find the abandoned house in Cheydinhal, Cyrodiil." With that, Lucien turned, cast his chameleon spell, and melted into the darkness.

Telaendril stared after him long after his shimmering haze dissapeared. A family that wouldn't harm or plot against her? She was already at home, and she'd never laid eyes on the place. She packed up her bedroll and slung her bow over her shoulder, pulled on her boots, and set a fast pace for the abandoned house in Cheydinhal, Cyrodiil.

**ooo**

"And that is how I came to join the Brotherhood." Telaendril finished, only slightly basking in the full attention given to her by the two newest family members: the little Breton, Antoinetta, and the big Orc, Gogron.

"Amazing!" Antoinetta gushed. "I could never murder my own father! But that's mostly because I have no idea where he is..."

Gogron's reaction was much more simple: "I think I'm in love."


End file.
